Salmon and Gammell

Of course by the date that this final decision had been
made Mr Gammell was already dead however the original dispute had begun
in 1848 when Mr Gammell was very much alive, and continued with appeals
and counter appeals in the intervening eleven years. When Mr Gammell
died in 1855 his wife, Rosa Ann, took up the cudgels and continued to
appeal and fight the courts in an attempt to gain what the Gammell’s
assumed was their legal rights as the owners of the lands of Portlethen.

You will already have realised that the subject at stake
here was the right to the sea salmon fishings off the local coast.
Recounting this early story and quoting the decision of the House of
Lords not only fits in with well with the story of Portlethen but is a
good precursor as to how sea salmon fishing was regulated in subsequent
years. Additionally it possibly sums up a small piece of legal Scottish
history.

So when Mr Gammell, or I should say, the tenants on his
estate that he had granted a lease to, started salmon fishing off the
Portlethen coast did they know they were breaking the law? In fact, were
they doing anything illegal at all? Was there a law already in place
stating that salmon that were caught in the sea were actually the
property of the Crown?

The proprietors in question (Mr Gammell and his tenants)
steadfastly refused to recognise the Crown’s claim to the ungranted
fishings on the coast at Portlethen, and they ignored requests that they
needed to make an arrangement for obtaining authority to work under a
title derived from the Crown. In plain English – they didn’t believe
that there were any laws in place and they certainly didn’t want the
Crown and its associated authorities to get a cut from the revenue that
was being generated by the fish they were catching.

Inevitably this was unacceptable to the authorities and
it became necessary to start legal proceedings against Mr Gammell – for
the maintenance of the Crown’s right, and a summons was raised in
January 1849 against Mr Gammell, George Gray and James Hutcheon (the
latter pair being the tenants who were involved in salmon fishing off
the coast of Portlethen).

So what followed was a protracted legal case that ebbed
and flowed for eleven years; a decision made by court, an appeal made by
the Defendant, further arguments, more decisions, an appeal to the House
of Lords and finally a legal ultimatum that established the rights of
the Crown to the sea salmon fishings of the coast of Scotland.

Before Mr Gammell’s case it wasn’t cut and dried who was
legally entitled to catch salmon on the sea coasts of Scotland, there
didn’t appear to be any law in force at that time and Mr. Gammell took
advantage of this particular “loophole” to exercise what he believed to
be his own legal right. It would seem that Mr. Gammell’s action spurred
the Crown into action and as a result laws and regulations were
introduced around 1859 that firmly established, in the eyes of the law
courts, the Crown as the rightful legal owners of the coastal salmon
fishings in Scotland.

It was soon after this that further regulations were
written up in respect to the type of salmon fishing that could take
place in the sea; the length of the salmon fishing season (what date it
started and ended on), what type of nets could legally be used, and what
days or times of the week when fishing could take place.

The Crown itself wasn’t particularly interested in
developing salmon fishing stations around the Scottish coasts, employing
it’s own salmon fishers, or creating a monopolised industry of their
own. Their intention was to establish their rights to the coastal waters
and lease these rights and related properties to commercial enterprise
under a regulated set of rules and ultimately this is what started to
happen around the Scottish coasts.

Had Mr Gammell been alive in 1860 he could still have
established salmon fishing stations of his own on the coast of Portlethen and sublet to his tenants but instead of being
in control of his own destiny he would have paid a rent to the Crown and
abided by their regulations and restrictions. Very probably he could
have still made some money out of this enterprise but would have lost a
chunk of any profit by having to pay the Crown for his right to fish the
sea next to his land.